Guild Park

Guild Park

The Guild Park is located in the Guildwood neighbourhood of Scarborough, in Toronto, Ontario.

This park is notable for a sculpture garden consisting of the rescued facades and ruins of various demolished downtown Toronto buildings such the old Toronto Star building, various bank buildings and the original Granite Club, located in the down-town of Toronto.

These sculptures surround the Guild Inn, a historic hotel, which used to be a siege for the famous Canadian Group of Seven, an artists colony. The hotel evolved out of Ranelagh Park, a 33 room, Arts and Crafts-style manor house built in 1914 for Colonel Harold Bickford atop the Scarborough Bluffs. He sold the hotel sold to the Roman Catholic Church’s Foreign Mission Society in 1921. The Society renamed it the China Mission College. In 1932 it was purchased by Rosa Breithaupt Hewetson who fostered the arts, turning the home into a museum, so that by the time of the Second World War it had become the Guild of All Arts with its Studio, which was assembled out of a garage and a stable from different parts of the grounds; it accommodated those practising batik, woodworking, weaving, and metalworking.

One of the remnants inside the Guild Park. A non-profit group called Artscape approached the city of Toronto with a proposed strategy for a cultural precinct on the Guild Inn site, which was met with interest. More concrete plans came, however, in September 2008, when the city approved a plan by Centennial College to operate a hotel, restaurant and conference site on the site. Photo: Elena

Architectural elements from demolished buildings were brought in the gardens of the Guild as follies.

On the territory, altogether, pieces of more than 60 structures can be seen, from buildings such as the Toronto Bank Building, the Quebec Bank, the home of Sir Frederick Banting, as well as various pieces of artwork, including 14 by Sorel Etrog, a few works by Emanuel Hahn, Francis Loring, E.B. White and Florence Wyle. This outdoor tour highlights those sculptures, as well as architectural remnants.

he Guild Inn was an historic hotel in the Guildwood neighbourhood of Scarborough, Toronto. It was once an artists colony.

The Guild Inn proved so popular as a lakeside resort and artisans’ community that in 1965 a six storey, 100 room addition and a swimming pool were added, plus further renovations in 1968.

View on the Ontario Lake from the Guild Park. Photo by Elena